


Simply Not Cricket

by Vae



Category: Blackadder, Lucifer Box - Gatiss
Genre: Christmas, Football (Soccer), Infiltration, M/M, World War II, ypres
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-02
Updated: 2010-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-05 15:42:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vae/pseuds/Vae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But wait, what's this? Yours truly serving in the trenches? Surely not, Lucifer, you must cry! Surely such an eminent portraitist would find himself in demand as an official war artist? Surely a gentleman spy of such address, skill and daring would be more effectively deployed? And I would smile my modest smile, and perhaps duck my head in acknowledgement of your entirely merited amazement and perhaps even blush a little at your appreciation. Perhaps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Simply Not Cricket

I have never been one to make an unnecessary fuss over the supposedly festive season of Christmas. Although at least nominally a Christian man, I've certainly committed enough sins to condemn myself to eternal damnation, and the misplaced celebration of the birth of a child to some unlucky free-hearted woman in the East nearly two millennia ago hardly seems worthy of note.

However.

After spending several weeks in a hole in the ground as the weather grew slowly colder and more unpleasant around us, I was ready to grasp at almost any distraction from the constant stench of too many men living and dying in close quarters and Perkins' interminable tuneless singing. Music hall songs should be sung by pretty girls in their underwear, not a skinny, spotty youth in an ill-fitting, third-hand uniform and boots he'd taken from a fresh corpse three days previously.

"Cocoa, sir?"

Well, of course Charlie had been stationed with me. I'd hardly have stood for anything else.

"Thank you, Private." I didn't question how he'd managed to come across real cocoa, let alone milk, in the god-forsaken battlegrounds of Belgium. Charlie was a remarkably resourceful young man, and considerably more decorative and useful than an oik like Perkins would ever be. "Any news?"

But wait, what's this? Yours truly serving in the trenches? Surely not, Lucifer, you must cry! Surely such an eminent portraitist would find himself in demand as an official war artist? Surely a gentleman spy of such address, skill and daring would be more effectively deployed? And I would smile my modest smile, and perhaps duck my head in acknowledgement of your entirely merited amazement and perhaps even blush a little at your appreciation. Perhaps. No, sadly the R.A. decided that my talents should be sent to the Western Front, and therefore Private Charles Jackpot and I found ourselves freezing our talents off in Ypres, along with pustulant Perkins and crew. An excellent bunch of chaps, no doubt, but somewhat basic in their approach to life and personal hygiene.

I found myself immensely and uncharacteristically thankful for Charlie's presence.

He hunkered down beside me, blowing unnecessarily at another mug of cocoa, cradled in his big hands. "Lost Sanderson to snipers last night, sir. Late back from the burials."

Damn. Sanderson had been a handy fellow with a rifle. "Happy bloody Christmas, eh? Make a note. I'll write the letter later." Mother, sister, sweetheart. At least this one wasn't married. I hated lying to married women. "And Jerry?"

"Still showing those bloody lights." Unbidden, Charlie reached into his pocket and fetched out a fag. I pursed my lips for him to position it, and cupped a hand around the end to shelter and obscure the flame as he dragged a match along his boot to light it. "Ashton thinks he heard something about football."

"Good Lord." I drew thoughtfully on my cigarette. I didn't play, of course. Physical exertion of that kind is highly ungentlemanly, and the whole ethos of 'play up and play the game', quite frankly, makes me rather nauseous. "Where?"

Charlie's wide mouth curved up at the corners, his breath puffing before him in small white steam clouds that made him resemble some infernal Chinese curiosity. "That's the joke of it, sir. According to Ashton, they're going to play out in no man's land. Us against Jerry."

"Are they, by George?" That opened up several rather interesting possibilities. "And do you intend to, ah, participate in this affair?"

"What? Me, sir?"

***

Despite my intense distaste for ball games (at least, of that manner), I have to admit that the football match was a stirring spectacle. Men came from neighbouring trenches on both sides of the field, cautiously at first, and then in greater numbers when the first brave or foolhardy venturers weren't blown to smithereens or shot by snipers. Greatcoats were discarded in careless piles, and then appropriated to form makeshift goalposts or mark lines.

I do hope that you're not expecting a full commentary on the match. I really have very little interest in it, and no understanding whatsoever of the rules, and so I would be reluctantly forced to disappoint you. Charlie managed to get himself ordered off the field by the German referee after a very short amount of time due to a dispute with one of the captains from the next trench along regarding whether the man was offside or not, whatever that might mean.

The lad was shivering as he made his glowering way off the pitch towards me, and I plucked a coat from the nearest pile, flinging it towards him. It wasn't his, of course, but we'd be back in plenty of time to reclaim our own, and I knew that his captain was hardly likely to discipline him for losing his uniform, since I was the captain in question and had far more interesting reasons to discipline Private Jackpot. "Put that on, keep your head down, and follow me. If anyone happens to address us, don't say a word. Not one."

I'd already swapped my khaki greatcoat for a reasonably well-cut grey one that fitted me rather better from the mixed pile lying by the side of the makeshift pitch, and impatiently slid my hands into pockets to find, much to my pleased surprise, a pair of rather good quality black leather gloves. They weren't modelled for my exceptionally fine and slender hands, of course, but they were excellent protection against the cold, and I determined immediately to make sure to hold onto them once this was done with. One should never turn down such gifts from fair Fortuna.

"Where are we going, though, Captain?" Charlie insisted on asking, although it was perfectly clear from the direction my footsteps had taken.

I turned my head very slightly and told him in clear and perfect, if somewhat vulgar, German (of which, of course, he didn't understand a word, poor boy) to shut his pretty mouth if he knew what was good for it. Evidently my tone was more then enough to convey my meaning, as he lapsed into blessed, if sullen, silence.

There's a certain knack to subterfuge in plain sight, and it's founded on expressing a certain air of certainty. The slightest hint of doubt or hesitation can be fatal and had, in fact, been so for several of my fellows in the first few months of war. Bluff is everything, and therefore I strode out confidently, shoulders back, head held high, betraying no sign whatsoever of the annoyingly persistent queasiness tormenting my delicate stomach or the bite of the chill wind assaulting my delicate features. My assured attitude led us directly through to the trenches without a single challenge, a circumstance I would have felt somewhat smug about were I not utterly convinced that any German intelligence officer could achieve the exact same thing in our trenches at that moment. Naturally, I had made certain there was nothing of strategic value left in our dugout to be found. This was an entirely different picture.

Bedclothes lay carelessly scattered on rapidly abandoned pallets, packs left deserted against improvised walls, and some rather promising looking envelopes and tubes protruded in a vaguely obscene manner from a slouching messenger bag, instantly catching my attention. Dim, blue-toned winter light straggled in through the ragged blanket tacked over the opening, outlining ammunition cases and sundry other sundries left discarded around the rough shelter. Most precious of all, the promise of privacy for a few meagre moments.

Tugging the blanket back over the approximation of a doorway (though can one really describe an entrance way as such when it lacks a door?) once Charlie and I were both safely inside, I moved immediately to the messenger bag. Charlie, with an instinct born long before I ever took his training in hand, went to the bed.

A cursory examination of the envelopes revealed nothing more than some callow youth's mawkish love letters to his liebe Gretchen, a girl who, I'm sure, thought herself well rid of the nearly illiterate Friedrich. Although his sentimental scribblings showed enough detail of position and tactics to ensure the censor's attentions before his fraulein ever laid her schone blaue Augen on it, there was certainly nothing there that I wasn't already fully aware of. The message tubes, however, proved far more promising.

"Charlie," I called quietly, not wanting to attract undue attention by my use of the King's English instead of the Kaiser's Deutsch. "Anything?"

He looked back at me, one arm still under the threadbare pillow (a rather deliciously abandoned looking pose which instantly gave rise to certain stirrings within my greatcoat), and shook his head, replying in a low, throaty murmur, "Just this, sir."

'This' was a small and promising looking jar with a screw top lid, sadly very unlikely to be of any tactical use to His Majesty. To one of His Majesty's faithful servants, perhaps, but not to King and Country. Their loss, and that servant's gain.

I smiled my pleased smile, and secreted the jar away. It was, after all, a tactical advantage to His Majesty should his opposing forces feel a little chafed. "Find us some paper. And something to write with." Sadly, duty came before I did, and certainly before Charlie did.

"How'm I meant to do that?" Charlie sat up, a most unbecoming frown creasing his young face, and I sighed. Truly, it was highly unlikely that there would be any paper merely awaiting use, save for Friedrich's missives, and I briefly contemplated sparing Gretchen the disappointment of receiving them. I decided that it would have been truly cruel not to allow the poor girl to discover her lover's lack of wit before joining her life to his, should he by some miracle survive the current conflict, and so I left the letters as they were.

No paper...but certainly pens. "Ink, then," I told him, with perfectly justifiable irritation, and searched Friedrich's bag until a pen met my questing (and, need I mention, extremely elegant and slightly chilled) fingers. One of the new design. German, of course. "And take your shirt off."

It need hardly be mentioned, I hope, that Charlie was wearing considerably more than his shirt, and that the loss of it would hardly cause him hardship, even in the bitter cold of Belgium's winter. There was no call whatsoever for the sulky glare he sent me at such an entirely reasonable order. He did, however, comply with admirable promptness.

The shirt in question was dingy in colour, and unpleasant in odour, having absorbed the perspiration of the youth's earlier sporting endeavours. Casting my eye over the pleasing paleness of his skin against the darkness of rough, makeshift sheets, an idea - which was, of course, inventive and brilliant, as it was one of mine - struck me. "And the rest," I directed, discovering a small pot of semi-frozen ink in the base of the bag, stripping off my gloves and warming it in my palms. The side effect was to chill my poor fingers, but that was hardly of moment. After all, I was shortly to have the means of warming them.

"The rest?" Charlie echoed, in tones of such horror that I wondered for a moment if I had unintentionally instructed him to emasculate himself. "You're off your bloody rocker. _Here?_"

"No, on one of the finest beaches that the Mediterranean has to offer. Of course here," I confirmed testily, and opened the ink, dipping the nib of the pen in and depressing the lever to fill the reservoir. "Sharpish, and I do believe that it's an offence to address your superior officer in such terms." One which I would take great delight in exacting retribution for at a later date, but not now. Now, I needed a copy of those maps, and the canvas of Charlie's skin, stretched so invitingly before me, would be inadequate unless he exposed more of it.

With mutterings I chose to ignore regarding my sanity and his and the inadvisability of removing more than one piece of clothing at a time in bloody Belgium in bloody December, Charlie bent to unknot his boots, and tugged them off, revealing socks that I only believed had seen the air in the last week because I had happened to witness the occurrence. I shall never know what caused young Jackpot's remarkable talent for making any piece of apparel he happened to don immediately appear louche, but it applied even to those socks, thick, woollen, itchy (I speak from experience) and drooping around his ankles once the support of his boots had been removed.

The socks were left once the trousers had been removed, and I eyed them, deciding that it was probably unlikely that I would require his feet. The grubby underwear, though, had to go. It presented a decidedly aesthetically displeasing barrier between his slender torso and long thighs. "All of it, Private," I ordered, checking the flow of ink on the back of my own hand - a shocking despoilation of my still-perfect skin, but sadly necessary.

Charlie scowled at me. "You're bloody mad, _sir_."

That was more like it. And he did, despite the glower, remove the underwear.

Cold flatters very few men. Charlie, although remarkable in many aspects of his person and personality, was not one of them. Still, following my directions and stretched out on his front on the untidy pallet, he presented a stirring sight. Or, at least, a sight that provoked distinct stirrings deep inside my uniform. "Now, stay still."

It was a sad fault (or blessing, I suppose, depending upon your point of view) in Charlie that he happened to be terribly sensitive to tickling. I dare say that the feel of my nib tracing the contours of the battlefield across his back was horribly provoking, but perhaps the cold became an advantage, as he barely moved while I drew. His fingers flexed, drawing dark valleys of their own in the rough sheet as I described the rise of the land on his splendidly curved buttocks, but my canvas remained still. I did, it must be confessed, go easy upon the lad, pausing when tension became apparent under my pen, purely for the sake of regaining an even canvas, but he still did awfully well, betraying himself only with curses that I instructed him to muffle in the bed covers for fear of being overheard.

It occurred to me that I really should teach the lad to swear in German. Still, priorities were priorities, and I eventually laid the pen aside in satisfaction, the details of the map accurately and, I do not flatter myself, beautifully transferred from the scrolls to the pale perfection of Charlie's skin.

You cannot, I am sure, expect me to have resisted the temptation of Charlie and privacy, even with the risk of discovery. Perhaps, indeed, especially with the risk of discovery. Of course, I did not resist, nor should Charlie have wished me to.

He stirred once the pen ceased to stroke his skin, raising his head and turning it to meet my eyes. "Can I get dressed again now, then? It's bloody freezing."

Below freezing, in fact, but I felt absolutely no chill in that particular shelter. Still, he had asked, rather than moving, and for that I gifted him my (rather rare) gentle smile, setting the pen aside "No, Charlie. The ink must dry." And other things must certainly not dry, for which purposes I retrieved the jar, watching Charlie's eyes darken as I unscrewed the lid with a metallic scrape. "You _can_ continue to remain still, can you not?"

I had no doubts whatsoever that he could, but one of the delights (and occasionally irritations) of Charlie was my continuing uncertainty that he _would_. This time, it seemed, the sketching session had enticed him into compliance, and I consigned the fact to my formidable memory for future reference.

"Yeah," he muttered, a sound close enough to the German 'ja' to satisfy any passing voyeur, who would, indeed, have had a most pleasing sight as he lowered his head back to his folded arms. "Just get on with it."

You should not, from this, surmise that Charlie failed to thoroughly enjoy our liaison. Merely that there remained a trace of sulkiness about his character that I must admit to finding entrancing. Not to Charlie, of course. "And quiet," I admonished, and slid my fingers smoothly along the lines of the German trenches, making a thorough exploration of the capacity for concealment therein while my other hand worked deftly to free and prime my cannon.

Charlie was not precisely still. I have never otherwise known trenches rise to meet me, or an enemy dugout so willingly reveal itself to my plunder. He sighed, and stretched, and I had a deal of work to prevent my hand from straying and smudging the ink before it had thoroughly dried. Indeed, I believe that the cold was slowing its drying, for I certainly took longer than was wise in thorough exploration of his valley before withdrawing my hand, deriving considerable satisfaction from the sounds of surrender, and finally made my advance.

No shelter in Ypres that day was so warm, so welcoming, as the one I personally - very personally - invaded that moment. There was a voluptuous pleasure in knowing myself so comfortably lodged while outside, my comrades shivered and sweated in viler exertions, much as Charlie shivered and sweated beneath me as we confirmed the placement of enemy troops. Ink blurred, and I was forced to blot it with his discarded shirt as my invasion proceeded to victory, trenches lifted to grant me access to discharge his weaponry and fully accept his surrender.

After, I allowed myself the indulgence of a few pleasant moments sprawled over Charlie's back, absorbing the furnace-like heat of his body, murmuring such nonsense as one is wont to murmur in such moments, my lips mapping the clear skin of his neck as thoroughly as my pen had earlier mapped his back, bum and thighs. When I at last moved back, briskly buttoning my uniform, the map so faithfully copied onto his skin was a blurred, blackened and entirely illegible mess.

"Get dressed," I ordered softly, replacing the small jar in its previous position below the ratty pillow, and tugged the gloves back on to protect my hands once I had restored the fastening of my trousers. Well, I wasn't about to remove any of my own clothing. It was far too cold for such activities, and my constitution considerably more delicate than that of Charles Jackpot. "And be careful not to smudge those markings." He could hardly see that they were already smudged, and it pleased me to see him attempting to follow my orders, slowing his hasty struggle into his uniform to ease it slowly and carefully over the perfect swell of his bum. I sometimes wondered if Charlie Jackpot's arse was, in fact, one of the main reasons that I kept him around. It was remarkably pleasing, and held all the proportion and symmetry of one of those wonderful statues of Greek athletes that so scandalise our more straight-laced matrons.

I found, as a general rule, that Private Jackpot was considerably more compliant after a good, hard fuck (well, come on, you didn't believe I was truly invading German territory, did you?), and he was positively enchanting when he turned sleepy blue eyes to me, thrusting his hands back into the pockets of his borrowed greatcoat and shivering. I could hardly be blamed for giving in to the temptation to kiss those cold-chapped and bitten-full lips, just once, keeping my own hands securely inside their gloves and my pockets. "Back to the footie."

***

The match was still in full flow as we returned to the pile of coats where ours had been left, and I added a few shouts of encouragement for the chaps still valiantly slogging it out in the mud. Any semblance of a formal game with any kind of rules had evidently long since vanished, leaving something more reminiscent of the scrums I remembered avoiding at school rugby afternoons. My coat was, thankfully, as I'd left it, folded inside the major's coat to protect it from mud. Charlie's had not fared so well, but at least the mud remained on the outside, some of it in suspiciously boot-print-like marks. I swapped mine first, cursing under my breath at the chill of the wool compared to the coat I'd been wearing. Experience had already taught me that my body would chill to match soon enough, rather than the wool heating.

I retained the gloves.

Once Charlie had shivered his way back into his coat, I hurried him back to our dugout, fastening the blanket securely across the doorway against the biting wind, and fetched my sketchpad from the bag stored on a makeshift hook driven into the wall. Anything touching the floor was eaten by rats, and it had only taken me one instance of finding a sadly nibbled page to learn that lesson. "Alright," I said briskly, sharpening a pencil with my knife and looking expectantly at Charlie. "Show me that map."

Charlie pouted, and Charlie grumbled, and Charlie growled, but Charlie also removed his uniform and stretched himself out on my bed in the most enticing pose I could imagine. With the smile of my namesake playing around my lips, I set myself to enjoy the view while I reconstructed the map on the page in front of me.

Not from the ruin on Charlie's back, of course. My memory is, as I believe I mentioned, formidable.

**Author's Note:**

> Lucifer Box and Charlie Jackpot are the creations and property of Mr. Mark Gatiss, long may he write them. I make no profit from this work of fanfiction.


End file.
